Top Ten WordPress Plugins

WordPress is a pretty amazing content management system. What makes it even more powerful are the hundreds of plugins you can install into your WordPress site. The only drawback I have encountered while searching plugins is compatibility issues. It is sometimes difficult to find plugins matching your version of WordPress; and even if you find plugins specifically made for your version, there is nothing guaranteeing they will play nice together.

So, after much trial and error, I have compiled a “top ten” list of what I consider to be the most effective plugins used on my website. I am using WordPress version 3.2.1 These plugins all work nicely together and have made my website much more complete.

If you are installing WordPress for the first time. I strongly urge you to take a look through the list and consider installing all ten of these plugins on your site.

This plugin is designed to easily manage and display your photo albums and slideshows in either a single or a network WordPress site.

I hope you find these plugins as useful as I have. I think these should be standard in a fresh WordPress installation. Some of the factors I considered when using different plugins were:

Could they be customized to keep the site looking consistent.

Did they play nicely with the other plugins installed on the site.

Were the options easily manageable without having to be an experienced coder.

Were they able to address all the various needs I had as a user.

In regards to the plugins I have listed here, the answer is YES!

One thing I’ve learned with installing WordPress plugins is that you must be careful about what you are downloading, installing, and activating on your site and server. Unfortunately, some of the plugins can be extremely questionable. The last thing you want to happen is getting the “White Screen of Death”. The above plugins have been very stable on my site and I am pleased with the performance of each one of them.

Thanks for reading. And please leave a reply letting me know what you think.

2 thoughts on “Top Ten WordPress Plugins”

Thanks so much for the great tutorials! I’m new to WordPress, and am anxious to get my WordPress website going, but it is a huge learning curve! I’m a visual learner, so these were very helpful.

Regarding this page (Top 10 Plugins), your #1 link is not working. WordPress can’t find that plugin.
#6 Pro Player – link points to SEO. When I searched for “Pro Player” in Plugins, none by that name shows up.